design-handoff

design-handoff is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from melodic-software/claude-code-plugins. It costs 154 tokens per session (1,198 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A design-readiness check that reviews documented design decisions before implementation planning begins.

In plain words
What is it for?
It checks design threads, labels each one as resolved or deferred, and produces a handoff summary and prompt for the planning stage.
Why use it?
It prevents planning from starting with unresolved design questions or decisions that exist only in conversation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Installs and runs on its own, but its text points at files inside its plugin — anything it tells you to read at a ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} path is only there once the plugin is installed. Installing the plugin gets both.

Part of the planning plugin — 10 skills shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/design-handoff
Any agent
npx skills add melodic-software/claude-code-plugins --skill design-handoff
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install planning, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for design-handoff

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/design-handoff.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/design-handoff)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/design-handoff"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/design-handoff.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 154 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,198 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00154 $0.01198
Opus 5 $0.00077 $0.00599
Sonnet 5 $0.00031 $0.00240
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00120

Measured yesterday against content hash 00de034173c8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-handoff scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/planning/skills/design-handoff/SKILL.md · 59 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 59 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Pre-computed context

Current branch: !git branch --show-current 2>/dev/null || echo "unknown"

Purpose

The seam between design and planning. /planning:plan's prerequisite check blocks on design-gate evidence; this skill produces that evidence honestly. A binary check read off the artifact, then a handoff summary sourced from the artifacts rather than recalled from conversation memory.

Design artifacts live in <contract_dir>/<topic-slug>/design/ (default docs/topics/). The topic's contract slice on the task branch, joining the memory slice under contract_tier: local; roots, tier, and precedence resolve per the topic-docs binding ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/reference/topic-docs.md. Derive <topic-slug> from the task or branch name (kebab-case, ≤40 chars; shared with /planning:design and /planning:plan).

Binary gate. Check the artifact, not your memory

Read design-threads.md in the topic's resolved design slice (<contract_dir>/<topic-slug>/design/, default docs/topics/; the memory slice under contract_tier: local) and confirm, thread by thread, that every design thread is one of:

  • RESOLVED. The deciding rationale is recorded in the artifact (not merely "decided"), or
  • directional. Direction agreed AND the remaining detail carries a research tag, or
  • TAGGED-DEFERRED. An explicit research tag naming the external investigation needed.

A thread that is unresolved AND untagged is a silent gap → FAIL: list the offending thread(s), route back by invoking /planning:design via the Skill tool (its design-threads and discussion rounds) to resolve or tag, and do NOT hand off. This is a binary check read off design-threads.md, not a "did we cover enough?" recap. A producing model rubber-stamps its own recap, so the gate must be read off the file rather than judged from memory.

If design-threads.md does not exist, check for design-resolution.md at the same path (the /planning:design early-exit artifact). Early-exit slices hand off on that artifact alone. Neither present → FAIL: no design evidence; route back by invoking /planning:design via the Skill tool.

Read the full file on GitHub · 59 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 59 lines · 154 tokens per session scan A 00de034173c8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-handoff is a skill published in the GitHub repository melodic-software/claude-code-plugins (15 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 154 tokens to every session and 1,198 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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